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Page 3
It is an observation seldom falsified, that such exercises, by poets
of the higher class, display neither their special characteristics,
nor any special characteristics at all. Matthew Arnold's was not one
of the exceptions. It is very much better than most school prize
poems: it shows the critical and scholarly character of the writer
with very fair foreshadowing; but it does not fore-shadow his poetry
in the very least. It is quite free from the usual formal faults of a
boy's verse, except some evidences of a deficient ear, especially for
rhyme ("full" and "beautiful," "palaces" and "days"). It manages a
rather difficult metre (the sixain rhymed _ababcc_ and ending
with an Alexandrine) without too much of the monotony which is its
special danger. And some of the tricks which the boy-poet has caught
are interesting and abode with him, such as the _anadiplosis_--
"Yes, there are stories registered on high,
Yes, there are stains Time's fingers cannot blot";
in which kind he was to produce some years later the matchless
"Still nursing the unconquerable hope,
Still clutching the inviolable shade,"
of the _Scholar-Gipsy_. On the whole, the thing is correct but
colourless; even its melancholy is probably mere Byronism, and has
nothing directly to do with the later quality of _Dover Beach_
and _Poor Matthias_.
Of Mr Arnold's undergraduate years we have unluckily but little
authentic record, and, as has been said, not one letter. The most
interesting evidence comes from Principal Shairp's well-known lines in
_Balliol Scholars, 1840-1843_, written, or at least published,
many years later, in 1873:--
"The one wide-welcomed for a father's fame,
Entered with free bold step that seemed to claim
Fame for himself, nor on another lean.
So full of power, yet blithe and debonair,
Rallying his friends with pleasant banter gay,
Or half a-dream chaunting with jaunty air
Great words of Goethe, catch of B�ranger,
We see the banter sparkle in his prose,
But knew not then the undertone that flows
So calmly sad, through all his stately lay."[2]
Like some other persons of much distinction, and a great many of
little or none, he "missed his first," in December 1844; and though he
obtained, three months later, the consolation prize of a Fellowship
(at Oriel, too), he made no post-graduate stay of any length at the
university. The then very general, though even then not universal,
necessity of taking orders before very long would probably in any case
have sent him wandering; for it is clear from the first that his bent
was hopelessly anti-clerical, and he was not merely too honest, but
much too proud a man, to consent to be put in one of the priests'
offices for a morsel of bread. It may well be doubted--though he felt
and expressed not merely in splendid passages of prose and verse for
public perusal, but in private letters quite towards the close of his
life, that passionate attachment which Oxford more than any other
place of the kind inspires--whether he would have been long at home
there as a resident. For the place has at once a certain republicanism
and a certain tyranny about its idea, which could not wholly suit the
aspiring and restless spirit of the author of _Switzerland_. None
of her sons is important to Oxford--the meanest of them has in his
sonship the same quality as the greatest. Now it was very much at Mr
Arnold's heart to be important, and he was not eager to impart or
share his qualities.
However this may be, there were ample reasons why he should leave the
fold. The Bar (though he was actually called and for many years went
circuit as Marshal to his father-in-law, Mr Justice Wightman) would
have suited him, in practice if not in principle, even less than the
Church; and he had no scientific leanings except a taste for botany.
Although the constantly renewed cries for some not clearly defined
system of public support for men of letters are, as a rule, absurd,
there is no doubt that Mr Arnold was the very man for a sinecure, and
would have justified the existence of Pipe or Hanaper to all
reasonable men. But his political friends had done away with nearly
all such things, and no one of the very few that remained fell to his
lot. His father had died in 1842, but the son served a short
apprenticeship to school-teaching at Rugby, then became private
secretary to Lord Lansdowne, the President of the Council (it is now
that we first meet him as an epistoler), and early in 1851 was
appointed by his chief to an inspectorship of schools. Having now a
livelihood, he married, in June of that year, Frances Lucy Wightman,
daughter of a judge of the Queen's Bench. Their first child, Thomas,
was born on July 6, 1852, and Mr Arnold was now completely estated in
the three positions of husband, father, and inspector of schools,
which occupied--to his great delight in the first two cases, not quite
so in the third--most of his life that was not given to literature.
Some not ungenerous but perhaps rather unnecessary indignation has
been spent upon his "drudgery" and its scanty rewards. It is enough to
say that few men can arrange at their pleasure the quantity and
quality of their work, and that not every man, even of genius, has had
his bread-and-butter secured for life at eight-and-twenty.
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